Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #99914

Ernesto M. Sebrie, MD, MPH, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, 530 Parnassus Avenue, Suite 366, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390, (415) 476-0122, ernesto.sebrie@ucsf.edu, Joaquin Barnoya, MD, Departamento de Investigacion y Docencia, Unidad de Cirugia Cardiovascular de Guatemala, 10000 NW 17St. Suite 102, Box 838, Miami, FL 33172, Eliseo J. Perez-Stable, MD, Department of General Internal Medicine, University of California San Francisco, 3333 California Street, Suite 335, San Francisco, CA 94143, and Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education, 530 Parnassus Ave., Suite 366, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate how transnational tobacco companies, working through their local affiliates influenced tobacco control policy-making in Argentina between 1964 and 2004. METHODS: Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents, local newspapers and magazines, internet resources, bills from the Argentinean National Congress Library, and interviews with key individuals in Argentina. RESULTS: Transnational tobacco companies (Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Liggett, Reemtsma, Lorillard, and RJ Reynolds International) have been actively influencing public health policy-making in Argentina since the early 1970s. Tobacco control advocates emerged in the late 1970s to raise public awareness of the health consequences of tobacco smoking and reorganized in the late 1980s to pressure the government to pass tobacco control laws. As in other countries, in 1977 the tobacco industry created a weak voluntary self-regulating code to avoid strong legislated restrictions on advertising. In addition to direct lobbying by the tobacco companies, these efforts involved use of third party allies, public relations campaigns, and scientific and medical consultants. During the 1980s and 1990s efforts to pass comprehensive tobacco control legislation intensified, but the organized tobacco industry prevented its enactment. There has been no national activity to decrease exposure to secondhand smoke. CONCLUSIONS: The tobacco industry, working through its local subsidiaries has subverted meaningful tobacco control legislation in Argentina using the same strategies as in the United States and other countries. As a result, tobacco control in Argentina remains governed by a national law that is weak and restricted in its scope.

Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to

• Describe tobacco industry strategies to block meaningful tobacco control legislation in Argentina;
• Identify tobacco industry allies in preventing tobacco control initiatives in Argentina and Latin America;
• Learn how to anticipate tobacco industry tactics

Keywords: Tobacco Industry, Tobacco Legislation

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.